In my room.

John 14


“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God[a]; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?"

In my Father's house he has kept a room for me.  Though that room has always been there for me, there was a time, there was a chance when it looked like it would remain empty forever.  I might have never seen it, occupy it and live in it, with him in his house.  

But he is a good Father and he wants me there.  He has given me every opportunity to claim it.  By his Grace, I did claim it.  I haven't seen my room, but I imagine it.  I don't think much about what it looks like, but what it feels like.  I imagine waking up there in the excitement of his voice, and the peace of his touch.  
My Father has given me a gift.  It is mine, but he keeps it for me.  He keeps it there in my room.  In a beautiful chest glows my eternal salvation.  It is a treasure that will never decay.  

"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

This is not a treasure I can work for or earn, but if I believe it is there. If I believe my Father is good, it will change me from the inside out. My salvation is waiting for me and protected by my Father, protected by the Promise of Christ and made possible by his Life, Death and Resurrection. Though I cannot work for it, if I believe it is real I must work towards it: seeking his justice, his mercy and telling the world of his great love. And though I am troubled by this world, I can live in the joy that is set before me in my room.

"3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Soil.

The soil of my heart is shallow, choked by weeds and hard like a well worn path.  God's grace continues to rain good seed all over it, even though I struggle to make use of it.  Even in this time when my heart seems so hard, his Grace makes me remember my vow to him.  And a vow exists expressly for this time.  A vow is thoughtless and easy to keep when we are in the center of his will.  But critical when we don't feel like it, when the goodness of his Grace cannot be received and feels like stinging pebbles instead of a promise of his love.  In this time, clinging to a vow, I will gather his seed and take it to him.  More than that I will hand him the harsh tools of sowing, their sharpened edges ready for work.  I surrender to Him, not because I feel like it, but because Satan is ready to consume me if I don't.  Even in my despair and rebellion, Christ has made a way for me to see enough to turn to him.
I do so out of desperation, just like I did ten years ago.  And in his mercy, he decides that it's enough.  Though my heart is wicked and my motives are questionable, simply turning to him is enough.  In that moment, something creeps in that I had forgotten about: hope.  

Have thine own way Lord...

The Lie (2).

What is a Lie, but the promotion or protection of our will over all others.  If we Lie because we say we want to protect others, then we are in fact saying that we know what's best.  We are declaring that we do not trust Christ to work out his will.  We are taking it upon ourselves to rule, to betray him for our own status or our own comfort.  A Lie is an obstruction.  A Lie prevents light from penetrating where it needs to go.  Whatever the reason may be, it is never God's intention for there to be darkness.  A friend reminded me that in heaven, there will not be any shade.  Such is the Light of Christ that it is all encompassing and no shadows can be found.

Truth is hard.  Being a Christian is hard.  Sometimes I wonder if I do a disservice to my Faith because I talk so much about how hard it is to follow Christ.  But the reality of this world is that the hard things remain.  Truth haunts us whether we are believers or not.  That is why knowing who Jesus is, who he really is, is so powerful.  He is a sweet and powerful Light that comes to shine into the dark parts of our hearts and show us love, real love.  And once you have been given a glimpse of that saving light, it then becomes necessary to remind yourself and others that darkness cannot be tolerated.  It's hard, but it's not complicated...Thou Shall Not Lie.  It's not a matter of will, it's a matter of release and surrender.  It's not that you shouldn't lie, it's that you don't need to lie.  Thy Will be done.

Element: Prayer and Resistance.

I was praying for someone recently.  They were and are in great pain and we were praying for relief and healing.  I believe in the power of Jesus Christ to heal, I have faith in him.  However, I was not confidant that this man would be healed by way of my prayers.  But I hoped he would and still do.  I'm now untangling some things in my head as I think about it.  Here is the tricky part.  God put me in position to pray for that man, yet it feels now that I was very much in the way of his healing.  I was simultaneously the conduit and the barrier.  Christ put me there to call on his power to be a vessel to carry his love and healing.  It is true that we as believers are the only hands and feet on earth that God possesses.  I was there.  I was willing.  God is able.  So what happened?  There was too much of me in the way.  Pride is a funny, sinister thing.  It has a special power to make a man think so much of himself by way of thinking so little of himself.  Self doubt combined with lack of humility prevented the free flow of the Grace of God.  I, myself, was in the way.  It wasn't the doubt, because I was only doubting myself, not God.  It was my very conscious presence, my inability to get out of the way.  This is struggle to live as John the Baptist says, "I must decrease, that he may increase."  

I will give myself some Grace.  I'm just not there yet, but I want to be.  I want to be less, so he can be more.  I thought my self deprecation was humility, but it was not.  It was just a clever way of being self focused.  God is working his will out in me, yet I'm still very much in his way, but I pray I'm getting better.  Awareness helps.  Until it doesn't.  Such a subtle thing, to be made aware of something and then have to work to shed it from being a diversion.  

A heating element is terribly inefficient by design.  There is so much resistance in the conductor that as electricity tries to move through, the element become very hot.  Sometimes we as the hands and feet of God think it's our jobs to get as heated as possible for Christ.  The reality is that we are to remove the resistance, remove ourselves so that we may more and more efficiently conduct the Grace and Love of God to others.  We are here simply to receive and distribute Christ to a weary world that needs it.  They don't need the heat of our resistance and insistence of our will.  They need the unobstructed power of the living God.  We must get in position and then get out of the way.

Let.

Let every Heart prepare Him room,
Let every Hand find fuel for his Fire to consume,
Let every Mouth speak seeds for His Kingdom to bloom,
Let every Aching Soul know the fullness that lies in an empty tomb.

Francis Thompson: The Kingdom of God

O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,	5
The eagle plunge to find the air—
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—	10
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estrangèd faces,	15
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.	20
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,—clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

Summer Dress.

The summer dress, 
Once verdant,
Now lies about the ankles 
And across the forest floor.
Glory has been shed, laid down, 
But not the majesty. 
The form now revealed in the absence 
Of it's outer garments,
 Is a breathtaking and bare structure.  
The whimsy of the green, then red, then gold now gone, 
We can see in full view, the bones that endure.  
Now, another ring about it's trunk, 
Leaves not just dying, but sacrificing, 
Pouring their remaining life back into the bark,
The capillary course having executed a full reverse 
So that another four seasons may be survived.  
In every season, no matter what it be, 
I know I shall never write the beauty of a tree.